Yin-yang of intermediation
If you haven’t seen Jon Udell’s screencast “Content, services, and the yin-yang of intermediation” you need to go check it out. Jon shows some really nifty tools and raises issues that libraries need to think about. Some tools he demos are AutoLink, LibraryLookup, Greasemonkey, Google Maps, and OpenSearch. The biggest thing that I took away from the screencast was that there still is a place for libraries to serve users. There are still roles for libraries to play. We are still in the business of providing content. What it means to provide content to our users though is changing. A growing part of our content provision role is linking users to the appropriate copy. Some of the tools shown in this role are exactly about filling that need. However, they have thus far made a fundementally flawed assumption: that each user has one library. This is not the case. I have a library card for SUNY Cortland, the public libraries, and the SUNY Binghamton library. To find the appropriate copy for me all of these places should be checked. This is a service that libraries could provide for their users. Opportunities like this for libraries are being created as the information landscape changes, what is important is that libraries need to morph in order to fill these new roles, otherwise someone else will fill the void.